Maxwell "Desktop" performance

[Magic Carpet]

I wonder, how many older 3D games can be run in the lowest p-state on GM200/GM204. With all the IPC gains, Maxwell has over Kepler, Maxwell core has been signficantly decreased from 324Mhz to just 135Mhz, which of course enabled additional power savings, but is it at the expense of extra performance? I wonder, how this compares power-wise with Kepler (GK110) in that lowest p-state.

Anyone has done any tests?

 

[BSim500]

I wonder, how many older 3D games can be run in the lowest p-state on GM200/GM204. With all the IPC gains, Maxwell has over Kepler, Maxwell core has been signficantly decreased from 324Mhz to just 135Mhz, which of course enabled additional power savings, but is it at the expense of extra performance? I wonder, how this compares power-wise with Kepler (GK110) in that lowest p-state.

Anyone has done any tests?

I tested the GTX 960 the other day. In 2D, the card felt fine, no Windows lag, etc. Playing a few older games the core was often clocked at just 135-250MHz. I have no experience with Kepler (I've had AMD dGPU's for 3 generations prior to Maxwell), but power consumption was often 15-25w lower than even a 7790 with zero rpm fan states even after several hours of gaming, which was impressive as hell for the 12db HTPC rig it went in. I'm pretty sure at the low clock rates, for older games it's almost on par with a 750Ti.

It's one of those interesting dynamics where "more cores" usually = more power draw, however for older games if a relatively static low load is distributed amongst more cores, then core loading (% usage per core) is lower meaning potentially being clocked at the next lowest speed bin counteracting the higher power consumption of the presence of those extra cores. Running DOTA2 has also been measured at just 33w for the same reason. However, the effect doesn't scale up indefinitely across the range and perf-per-watt tends to be more of a "bell curve" for older games as the mid-range cards will often downclock to the same low-intermediate states as high-end ones but without the thermals of the extra cores.

For exact Maxwell vs Kepler data though you'll need to ask someone else who's owned both and done power testing on older games on both, which is pretty specific information.

 

[Magic Carpet]

BSim500,

I am pretty sure, the bigger Maxwell chips are able to run older/simple games for longer in the lowest performance state, thus saving power. I know that my Asus 670 consumes less power running Need for Speed Underground, than my Gigabyte GT 640. That GT 640 has to run the higher core/memory clocks in order to provide 60 FPS at all times. (which again, many reviews do not show).

I suspect, Titan X in the lowest state can run lots of older games in "idle" state but comparison with GK110 would be nice, since the latter has higher idle clocks. Yeah... could be interesting. Thanks for writing down your experience.